The Peoples Democratic Party caucus in the House of Representatives has warned against a further postponement of the resumption of the House.
The PDP lawmakers said they would resist another postponement in the resumption date of the House.
The caucus noted that the 360-member House had hardly settled down for any serious legislative business since the House was inaugurated on June 6, owing to the raging leadership tussle in the caucus of the majority All Progressives Congress.
Speaking for the caucus in Abuja, former House Deputy Leader, Mr. Leo Ogor, said the PDP members were ready to work and could not afford to continue to wait for their APC colleagues because of their internal crisis.
The lawmakers had embarked on a four-week forced break after a free-for-all on the floor of the House on June 25 over the leadership tussle in the lower federal legislative chamber.
The members were scheduled to resume on Tuesday (yesterday), but the date had been shifted by another one week.
“The two parties have not resolved their differences. The issue of where the Majority Leader and other principal officers will come from has not been resolved.
“There were fears that had the House resumed on Tuesday, any camp with more members in attendance could have taken any decision”, one National Assembly official told our correspondent in Abuja on Tuesday.
Ogor, who is poised to become the Minority Leader of the 8th Assembly, stated that his caucus examined the implications of frequent postponement of sittings and resolved that the next resumption date (July 28) must remain unchanged.
He said, “The new resumption date should be a day that is non-negotiable because resumption must take place on that day.
“We are ready to work; we were elected to come and legislate for our people and there are lots of issues that have started having some level of negative impact, even in the society.
“We take it as a matter of fact that the APC as a party should please urgently put their house in order so that they can come to the floor and carry on with their legislative business.”
The caucus also decried the alleged “harassment” of officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission by operatives of the Department of State Services in Rivers, Akwa Ibom and other states over electoral matters.
The APC Loyalists Group, which is led by former House Minority
Leader, Mr. Femi Gbajabiamila, had told Odigie-Oyegun that the South-East zone was not qualified to hold a leadership seat because its two members were “new” and would be in breach of House rules to hold such a position.
The group had written Odigie-Oyegun to insist that the original zoning of principal offices recommended by the APC must be adhered to as a mark of party supremacy.
The party had zoned the majority leader to the South-West; deputy leader to the North-West; chief whip to the North-East; and deputy whip to the South-South, leaving out the South-East.
However, the 8th Assembly Consolidation Group, led by the Speaker,
Mr. Yakubu Dogara, in its own letter to Odigie-Oyegun, argued for an even spread of the principal offices to include all the six geopolitical zones of the country.
Dogara had proposed that the majority leader should go to the North-West; deputy leader to the North-Central; chief whip to the South-South and the deputy whip to the South-East.
In its letter dated July 21 and signed by Mr. Austin Chukwukere on behalf of the South-East caucus, the zone said, “The APC South-East Zonal Caucus aligns itself completely with the position of the
Speaker, House of Representatives, Dogara Yakubu’s letter to the national chairman of the APC on the issue of election of the principal officers of the House.”
It said it considered as “marginalisation” any move aimed at
sidelining the zone from the sharing of principal offices in the House.
The group also claimed that the rule on “cognate experience” referred to by the Gbajabiamila group became irrelevant soon after the inauguration of new members.
Dogara’s consolidation group also reacted to the letter by the Gbajabiamila group on Tuesday, urging the party’s leadership to “disregard” it.
The spokesman for the group, Mr. Abdulmumin Jibrin, said in Abuja that much as they remained loyal to the APC, they still supported the sharing of principal offices as proposed by the Speaker in his letter to Odigie-Oyegun.
Jibrin announced that the group had adopted a lawmaker from Kano State, Mr. Alhassan Ado-Doguwa, as the majority leader of the House in line with the zoning arrangement proposed by Dogara.
Ado-Doguwa, a key supporter of Gbajabiamila, was the one nominated by the APC as the deputy majority leader in the letter Odigie-Oyegun sent to Dogara on June 23.mailto:editor@today.ng

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Suddenly pdp wants to work. End time things

Tolupride:
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Pls use your fullstop to end my comment above.